IN THE LAND OF BLACK GOLD - Grandprixplus

ABU DHABI GP 

Issue 115 

4 November 2012 

IN THE LAND OF 

BLACK GOLD 

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PASSION

Le a d e r 3 

On Th e Gr i d b y Jo e Sa w a r d 4 

Sn a p s h o t s 5 

Ki m iRa ik k o n e n 15 

Wa l t e r Ha y e s 20 

Ri c a r do Ro d r ig u e z 24 

Th e F1 Dr i v e r Ma r k e t 32 

Th e Ha c k Lo o k s Ba c k 37 

Ab u Dh a b i - Qualifying Re p o r t 40 

Ab u Du b a i - Ra c e Re p o r t 56 

Th e La s t La p b y Da v i d Tr e m a y n e 74 

Pa r t i ng Sh o t 75 

© 2012 Morienval Press. All rights reserved. Neither this publication 

nor any part of it may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or 

by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or 

otherwise, without the prior permission of Morienval Press. 

ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX Issue 115 

The award-winning Formula 1 e-magazine is brought to you by: 

David Tremayne | Joe Saward | Peter Nygaard 

with additional material from 

Mike Doodson | Anders Rysgaard 

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WHAT WE THINK 

DAVID TREMAYNE is a freelance motorsport writer whose clients include 

The Independent and The Independent on Sunday newspapers. A former editor 

and executive editor of Motoring News and Motor Sport, he is a veteran of 25 years 

of Grands Prix reportage, and the author of more than 40 books on motorsport. 

He is the only three-time winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Timo Makinen 

and Renault Awards for his books. His writing, on both current and historic issues, 

is notable for its soul and passion, together with a deep understanding of the 

sport and an encyclopaedic knowledge of its history. David is also acknowledged 

as the world expert on the history of land and water speed record breaking and is 

also passionate about Unlimited hydroplanes. He is the British representative on 

the FIA Records Commission, and the driving force behind the STAY GOLD speed 

record jetcar programme. 

JOE SAWARD has been a motorsport writer for 29 years. He began his 

career travelling around Europe, living in a tent. He became Grand Prix Editor of 

Autosport, chronicling his adventures in the celebrated “Globetrotter” column. 

His wide-ranging experience of the sport resulted in the commission to write the 

best-selling “The World Atlas of Motor Racing” before he moved on to become 

the pioneer of electronic media in motorsport, launching the award-winning 

Business of Motorsport e-newsletter in 1994, followed by www.grandprix.com. He 

has since moved on to GP+ and his F1 blog. Trained as an historian, Joe is also an 

acknowledged expert on the Special Operations Executive (SOE). His 2007 book 

“The Grand Prix Saboteurs”, the untold story of Grand Prix drivers who became 

SOE agents, resulted in him winning the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Renault Author 

of the Year Award. Joe continues to work on non-F1 book projects, his latest being 

“The Man who Caught Crippen”. 

PETER NYGAARD began taking photographs at Grands Prix while studying 

law at Copenhagen University. After graduation in 1982 he established the Grand 

Prix Photo company and has since attended more than 350 Grands Prix. Today 

he not only takes photographs but also writes and commentates about F1.The 

company covers every Grand Prix and many other events and with contacts all 

over the world can supply photos from almost any motor race. In addition to 

current photography the Grand Prix Photo archive is one of the biggest in the 

world, Nygaard having acquired the archives of a number of F1 photographers, 

notably Italian photo-journalist Giancarlo Cevenini and France’s Dominique 

Leroy plus a portion of Australian Nigel Snowdon’s collection. Grand Prix Photo 

has 25,000 photographs on its website and millions more in its offices, which are 

decorated with a Tyrrell 021, which Peter acquired from Ken Tyrrell in the 1990s. 

v 

Joe and David are non-executive directors of Caterham Cars Group Ltd. 

They are not involved in the operations or management of the F1 team. 

doing it right... 

There are a lot of Formula 1 races that we really enjoy - for many different reasons. 

There are tracks with great layouts, great history and great atmosphere. Abu Dhabi is 

one of the best paddocks on the F1 calendar. It is small enough to feel intimate, yet big 

enough to give people the space they need. It backs on to the marina and produces 

just the sort of images that draw new fans into the sport. From a professional point 

of view it is a massive networking event in the Middle East. The Paddock and the 

Paddock Club are packed full of movers and shakers. 

It is a great example for all prospective race promoters to see how Formula 1 

should be done. So Russians, Mexicans, Americans and all the rest of you, beat a path 

to Yas Island to see how it’s done.

on the grid by Joe Saward 

tired but emotional... 

As we go into the final stretch in the Formula 1 

World Championship of 2012, the Grand Prix circus 

is looking a little battered. There is coughing and 

snerching all over the place as nasty germs with 

totalitarian ambitions from Korea, India and the 

Middle East get into pitched battles with cleanliving 

Anglo Saxon antibodies. 

It has been a long season: eight months of 

travel and for most of us more than 100,000 miles 

of flying. I was asked the other day to do some 

sums about the travelling that we do in F1 and 

discovered that by the end of the season we will 

have flown the equivalent of four and half times 

around the world, just to get to the F1 races. That is 

about 190 hours of flying, which is eight 24-hours 

days, or 24 eight-hour working days. Or at month 

in “the office”. 

And that is without doing any flying 

other than going to the races. If we go to tests, 

presentations, meetings or holidays that adds to 

the total. 

The time changes are fairly gruelling as 

well, not to mention the travelling diets and the 

weird working hours. Last week I work up at two in 

the morning on three consecutive nights, asleep 

on the bed fully clothed. And there was no alcohol 

involved on any occasion! 

We are all a bit weary and a little tetchy but, 

you know what? We all love it. We would not do it if 

we didn’t like it, because there are endless lifestyles 

that are easier and less stressful. Years ago when 

our colleague Gerry Donaldson wrote a book called 

“Grand Prix People”, about the characters one 

meets in the sport, Bernie Ecclestone described F1 

in very simple terms: “They’re all a bit mad, aren’t 

they?” he said. 

He was right. 

The F1 circus attracts unusual people 

people. For years I used to write a short feature 

every week about someone in the F1 Paddock. I 

would wonder around, pick someone I did not 

know and wander up and say: “Hello, how did you 

get here?” 

There were the most amazing stories. I have 

met motorhome girls with two university degrees; 

security men with Masters degrees; there are 

photographers who used to be TV directors and 

decided to try something different. I never cease 

to be amazed at the talents that I uncover. 

We call it the F1 circus and that is the 

perfect description because it is a world of people 

who were not made to work from nine to five. We 

are all happiest when we work in frantic bursts, in 

all manner of conditions. That is the fun. 

I put my passion down to three things: I love 

characters; I love travelling and I love motor racing. 

I figure that the travelling is down to a childhood 

spent reading National Geographic, looking at 

pictures of wildly exotic places and poring over 

maps, wondering what it would be like to steam 

down the Zambezi or visit the iron mountains of 

north west Australia. 

I love the eccentricities of my fellow F1 

“villagers” and of course at the bottom of it all is 

the passion for racing. Even after all this time, it is 

still a magnificent and magic thing. In last week’s 

GP+ Toto Wolff described F1 as like gladiators with 

machines and that is a great description. These are 

tough, talented guys, driving fantastic machines 

dreamed up by boffins who should really be 

working with missiles or spacecraft. 

By the time you read this we will be on 

planes heading west to the dawn (yes, it is possible) 

and next week we’ll all be in Texas. 

Bonkers, but magnificent. 

v 

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KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN by Joe Saward 

RETURN OF THE ICEMAN 

Kimi Räikkönen won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in style. The 2007 World Champion is third in the title race this year. It has been an impressive 

comeback - but the Finn is not finished yet. He has just re-signed for the Lotus F1 Team for 2013. 

15

"I’m very happy for the team," said Kimi after the 

race. "We have had hard times lately and hopefully 

this gives a bit fo support for the people who run 

the team, who own the team, the people who 

work there. For everybody. 

"Of course I’m happy myself. If I win it’s 

great, if I don’t I will try again and it’s not the end 

of the life. We’ve been close few times. I think we 

had the speed to win but it was very hard if you 

don’t start in the front. We knew the start would 

be a really big key and I got a really good start. 

We did not have the speed against the McLaren, 

but to win you have to finish." 

Räikkönen had been largely written off in 

Formula 1 circles after being paid off by Ferrari at 

the end of 2009, despite having a contract for 2010. 

There was some idle talk of him moving elsewhere 

but it came to nothing and so Kimi decided to head 

off and do something that he really wanted to do: 

go racing and have fun. He reckoned that he would 

find what he was looking for in the World Rally 

16

Championship and Citroën saw the opportunity 

to use that to their advantage, with a little help 

from Red Bull, which liked Kimi's "Iceman" image. 

He competed in a total of 20 WRC events 

in 2010 and 2011, but rallying was a little tougher 

than he perhaps expected. His best result was 

a fifth place in Turkey in the course of the first 

season. 

In the course of 2011 it became clear that 

he was becoming restless and looking at other 

ideas. He even showed up in America, to try 

racing some of the NASCAR stock cars, initially 

in the NASCAR Truck Championships and then 

in the second tier Nationwide series. The idea of 

"The Iceman" from F1 driving fast pick-ups with 

sponsorship from the decidedly-uncool Perky 

Jerky, a caffeine-enhanced dried meat confection, 

flavoured with soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon 

juice, garlic, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and 

guarana, did not really work. Kimi was not a good 

old boy of NASCAR and there was not much point 

in pretending otherwise. It did not grab him and 

the conclusion he reached - privately at the time 

- was that the place he really wanted to be was 

back in Formula 1. For most drivers such a move 

would be impossible. You don't get many second 

chances in Grand Prix racing. But for the folk in F1 

Räikkönen was an enigma. He had had the talent 

and the motivation to go all the way - and win the 

World Championship, but he had given it all away. 

The talent was still there, but the big question was 

whether Kimi had the motivation again. There was 

a lot of scepticism about whether returning to F1 

was a good idea nor not. Eric Boullier, the boss of 

the Lotus F1 Team, said that he knew it was the 

right decision after he had looked Kimi in the eyes. 

He had seen the fire. 

And Kimi has been one of the real stars 

of the year, flying under the radar, not making 

headlines, but picking up points all along the way. 

As the other challengers have stumbled over each 

other, he has delivered the goods time after time. 

At the time of writing he was third in the World 

behind Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, but 

ahead of Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson 

Button. The results have been far better than many 

thought would be possible. 

Kimi remains much as ever. He never uses 

two words when one will do and he does not give 

a damn what people think. His philosophy is still 

the same: the results speak for themselves. He 

does not need to waffle on nicely for the media. 

"This season has shown me that I still love 

racing as much as I ever did," he says. "Obviously, I 

would have not come back to the sport if I did not 

feel like this. Driving a Formula 1 car still gives me 

the same inspiration and I feel the same passion 

for it. I have been very happy with the team; how 

they work, how they approach the races and how 

they invest in developing the car. I think with the 

progress behind the scenes at Enstone we could 

be fighting for the podium even more often next 

year and also be able to make a stronger challenge 

for the Championship. 

17

"My motivation is as strong as it’s always 

been. I’m keen to race on. I was pretty happy to 

go and do something else for a while, then I did 

some racing and I'm enjoying it again. It's the 

same places - OK, there are some new circuits and 

places to come to this year and a new team, but 

apart from that, Formula 1 hasn't changed and it's 

exactly the same. For me, nothing's really changed. 

People always talk about where I was last time, that 

I didn't have the motivation but I thought I drove 

better than I ever drove in the last year; it was just 

that we had a pretty bad car at that time. Nothing 

has really changed for me. 

"I think there were a few people who had 

doubts about how I would perform after being 

away for a while. Personally, I didn’t feel I stopped 

racing at all. I may have been doing something 

different with rallying, but after coming back to 

Formula 1 I immediately felt fit enough – and fast 

enough – to start racing again. My hunger for 

winning is exactly the same as always and I think 

I’ve shown that I’m capable of fighting for victories. 

Obviously there have been none so far this year, 

but we have come close a few times and for sure 

we’ll keep on trying for as long as it takes to start 

winning again." 

Kimi reckons that the team has done a 

good job in 2012 and that the foundations that 

have been laid can be built on next year. 

"We have proven as a team that we can 

build and develop a strong and reliable car," This 

year has been a good platform to put down strong 

foundations for what will hopefully be an even 

better season next time around. We know what 

we need to do to improve in some important 

areas, which should help us get even better results 

next year. All in all I’m looking forward carrying 

on working with the team to achieve more good 

things in 2013." 

Can the team be a winner in 2013? 

"Of course, the main thing is to do my 

very best every time, every weekend, every race. 

I think to be able to perform better in the races I 

have to find more from myself and from the car in 

qualifying. This season has shown that you have to 

18

e on first two rows to be able to win every time. 

It’s important to improve our grid positions for 

2013. That’s one of main targets for me." 

In the two years that Raikkonen was away, 

Formula 1 switched to Pirelli tyres. Was there any 

problem getting used to them? 

"I admit that I had some thoughts about the 

tyres before I did one private test - OK, it wasn't the 

race tyres, it was some other even more worse tyres 

but I thought that they were fine," he says. "When 

you come from rallying, they have much more grip 

and the tyres were OK for me so after that, I already 

knew that I would not have any issues, because 

there was a lot of talk that maybe it was not good, 

but when I came back, I didn't really remember 

how it was two years earlier, so I thought that the 

tyres were completely fine and I still do so. OK, in 

some races they wore out a bit faster than in the 

past but it's the same for everybody and they've 

been doing a very good job for Formula 1 so I'm 

happy with that." 

The car was good enough to make a really 

good impression, but winning was tough. 

"We are not the fastest car so we need more 

help to win, but we will keep trying and hopefully 

we can achieve it," he says. "We will try until there's 

no chance. But if we can improve the car in the 

next three races, you never know. We have seen 

this year that one race you can be very strong 

and the next not so good, it's been up and down 

between the teams. 

"For some reason, after the summer 

break, some of the teams have been much more 

consistent. I think we still have a good car. We 

improved it in the last race again, but we are not 

at the level that we maybe we were compared to 

others at the beginning of the season. " 

The media finds Räikkönen rather 

frustrating. It is like being given a canvas and paint, 

but no brush. One can given an impression of the 

person, but one cannot paint a proper portrait. 

Kimi does not care. If people think he is 

dull there will be fewer requests for interviews and 

he will get more time to himself. More peace and 

quiet. It is fairly cynical ploy. His friends speak of 

him being a warm and funny indiviudal. Perhaps he 

is, but if he does not want to show that and prefers 

his role as the monosyllabic Iceman. The fans seem 

to like it but at the end of the day one does not 

judge an F1 driver on whether he is a good guy or 

not. Results are what matter. And Kimi is delivering 

them. End of story. 

v 

19

walter hayes by David Tremayne 

THE FATHER OF THE DFV 

This weekend in the UK, the classic Walter Hayes Trophy Formula Ford meeting at Silverstone commemorates the man who inspired 

one of the most important engines in F1 history: the Ford Cosworth DFV 

A lot of journalists like to think they could tell team 

owners how to run their organisations. But Walter 

Hayes really could. Men of the calibre of Colin 

Chapman and Ken Tyrrell were all too happy to 

listen to his erudite suggestions. 

It falls to few journalists to change the 

history of a sport, but without question Hayes 

did when he persuaded Ford Motor Company 

that it should finance the creation of a new F1 

powerplant. 

Think about that now. It would be the 

equivalent, perhaps, of Piers Morgan, the former 

oft-beleaguered editor of the British national daily 

newspaper the Daily Mirror, being summoned into 

the employ of Vauxhall and somehow getting the 

company to stump up £10M to fund a new 1.6-litre 

V6 turbo designed by a pair of guys plying their 

trade in GP2 engine preparation. 

Yet when Hayes succeeded in 1966 in 

gaining access to £100,000 of his employer’s 

moolah to put the way of engine designers Keith 

Duckworth and Mike Costin, the course of British 

motor racing was changed. 

The fruits of Cosworth’s labour, and of 

Hayes/Ford’s clever investment, was the Ford 

Cosworth DFV V8 engine. It appeared at the Dutch 

GP in 1967, won first time out in the back of Jimmy 

Clark’s new Lotus 49, and didn’t stop winning until it 

had clocked 155 successes. No other engine in F1’s 

history has ever approached such levels of success. 

“That engine was literally done by Keith 

Duckworth, and he designed all the test rigs for it, 

too,” Hayes recalled in 1997. “And he allowed me to 

spend £100,000 in instalments… I think we should 

recognise it as a kind of foundation point in our 

life when we in a sense established this country - 

in an international fashion, not a silly flag-waving 

fashion - as the place where you go to have motor 

racing cars and engines made.” 

It’s always easy with the benefit of hindsight 

to look back on things and discern an indelible 

and inevitable pattern that was nothing like so 

apparent at the time. In 1997 a group of people 

gathered at Donington Park to commemorate the 

mighty DFV’s 30th anniversary. Jackie Stewart said 

a few words, as is his custom, and paid his own 

tribute to the engine that propelled him to all of 

his three world titles while also making champions 

of Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi, 

James Hunt, Mario Andretti, Alan Jones, Nelson 

Piquet and Keke Rosberg, not to mention Lotus, 

Matra, Tyrrell, McLaren and Williams. It was also 

the engine that made winners of other teams such 

as Hesketh, March, Penske, Shadow and Wolf. 

“It is great, 30 years on, to think that 

everyone has fond memories of a day I would 

rather forget!” he began. “I was driving for BRM and 

I was not at all well placed on the grid and I was not 

at all well placed at the finish, but it was surely the 

day that history and the motor industry will well 

recall. One of the most profound occasions, when 

a man called Jim Clark, driving a car called a Lotus, 

with an engine called a Ford, won. Ford, in Formula 

One…?” 

Subsequently the alliteration would come 

so naturally, even though Ford ultimately and 

catastrophically gifted its F1 association to Jaguar, 

that it’s easy to overlook just what an impact 

Clark’s success had back then, not just on motor 

20

acing, but on the industry. How much Ford’s bold 

decision to link with Cosworth did to strengthen 

the British stranglehold on F1. It was a huge step 

forward for Lotus, Ford and Cosworth, and also for 

racing’s standing within the motor industry. 

The Cosworth DFV came at a time when 

the British manufacturers desperately needed a 

new proprietary engine, following the withdrawal 

at the end of 1965 of Coventry Climax as the 

customers’ favourite engine supplier. In 1966, 

the first year of the new 3 litre F1, only one of 

the British-based teams was well placed, and 

that was Brabham. Jack had a deal to run the 

Oldsmobile-derived single-cam V8 Repco engine 

in his lightweight cars, whereas Lotus struggled 

initially with the underpowered 2-litre version 

of the Climax V8, and latterly with the hideously 

complex and overweight behemoth from BRM, 

the H16. Lotus did better with the engine than 

BRM itself, which isn’t saying much, while the 

sportscar Maserati V12s that Cooper used were 

feeble and unreliable. The Honda was overweight 

too, and Ferrari had a power deficit. Dan Gurney’s 

Eagle Weslake was beautiful, powerful and sleek, 

but often unreliable. 

The DFV changed everything overnight. 

It was a triumph of design that in one imperious 

stroke redefined F1’s parameters, and bequeathed 

a dramatic legacy to British motorsport. All of a 

sudden aspiring owners, such as Ken Tyrrell, could 

21

once again put an F1 team together around the 

engine which was not just the best but which, 

crucially, was available commercially to anyone. It 

paved the way for teams such as Williams to gain 

their first footholds on the mountain. 

And yet it was not initially Ford’s plan to sell 

the unit. In 1967 Lotus had an exclusive on it, but 

suddenly it occurred to the ever-shrewd Hayes that 

the sword could cut two ways. While Ford suddenly 

had an engine capable of winning everything, if 

it literally did that without opposition, the Ford 

name could quickly become tarnished. Hayes 

soon suggested to Colin Chapman that it might 

be a good idea if they offered it for sale to others, 

to prevent that. 

Incredibly, Chapman quite meekly 

complied with Hayes’ wish, and thus the pair of 

them further influenced history. Can you imagine 

that sort of thing happening today? 

The DFV’s derivatives last raced in F1 in 

the early Nineties, before privateer teams gained 

access to its replacement, the 1989 HB. Hayes 

himself died on December 26 2000, in the London 

Independent Hospital. 

He had been born on April 12 76 years 

earlier in Harrow, the son of a printer. Gradually he 

established himself in journalism, doing a variety 

of reporting jobs until he became associate editor 

of the Daily Mail. In 1956, at the tender age of 32, 

he was appointed editor of the now long-departed 

Sunday Dispatch. 

Five years later came the call to Ford. He 

joined as director of public affairs, and part of his 

brief was to put some sparkle into what the public at 

that time perceived as dull, workmanlike products. 

The situation can be imagined. Ford management 

at that time was used to having the working man 

buying its products, for that was their image. But 

here was this young man, suggesting that Ford 

should challenge Ferrari for the Le Mans sportscar 

race, and put money into Grand Prix motor racing. 

Few were blessed with his vision. 

It says everything for Hayes’ powers of 

persuasion that Ford did go to Le Mans, where it 

would win four times between 1966 and 1969, and 

did spend that famous £100,000 on Duckworth 

and Costin’s jewel. No money was ever better 

spent in motorsport. Ford’s famous blue oval was 

somewhere to be found on every one of the DFV’s 

155 GP victories, and the powerplant itself would 

also win at Le Mans, and at Indianapolis. 

It is not surprising that Hayes rose at DFVlike 

speed through the ranks at Ford. A man very 

much given to deep thought before action, he was 

elevated to the position of vice-president of Ford 

of Europe, and became vice-chairman in 1976. In 

1980 he was made a vice-president of the American 

parent company. Henry Ford’s grandson, Henry

II, liked him, not just for his intelligence and wit, 

but also because he could think fast. In 1975 Ford 

faced a drink driving charge; Hayes’ sound advice 

was to fall back on Benjamin Disraeli’s tactic as he 

faced the media. ‘Never complain, never explain.’ 

Hayes received a CBE in 1982 for services 

to the motor industry, retired in 1989, but was 

called back to direct Aston Martin after Ford had 

acquired it. The idea was that he would wind 

things up, but instead he injected new life in to the 

company and introduced its saviour, the Jaguarderived 

DB7. He retired for good in 1994, but was 

in demand all over for his afterdinner speaking. 

To the end he was a thinker first, then a man of 

considered but decisive action. Stuart Turner, who 

had followed his footsteps in leaving journalism 

for an industry role, called him a giant of the game, 

“a man who had an unconventional approach, yet 

an outstandingly mature man.” 

Jackie Stewart said of him: “He was always a 

gentleman of great dignity and style, and had this 

tremendous peripheral vision. He was involved in 

many prestigious charities and trusts, about which 

he rarely spoke, and besides being a great writer 

was probably the greatest public relations officer 

that the motor industry has ever had.” 

Hayes had the foresight to put Stewart 

under contract to Ford in 1964, where he joined 

the great Jim Clark, and it was Hayes in 1968 who 

underwrote the Scot’s salary to ensure that he 

joined Ken Tyrrell’s nascent F1 enterprise instead 

of going to Ferrari. 

Arguably, the DFV was the greatest 

race engine in history. Fittingly, the name 

of Walter Leopold Arthur Hayes will forever 

be linked to it. 

v 

23

RICARDO RODRIGUEZ by David Tremayne 

MEXICO’S METEOR 

The headlines that Sergio Perez has generated recently have obliquely reminded seasoned observers of Pedro Rodriguez, but half a 

century ago there was an even faster Mexican who blazed like a meteor across F1’s skies… 

24

November 1 is a major holiday in Mexico. It’s Dia 

de los Muertos - The Day of the Dead - when the 

country honours family members and friends who 

have passed away, with public celebrations and 

private prayers. 

This year, the holiday also marks a notable 

and tragic anniversary for one of Mexico's greatest 

champions. Fifty years ago, at the circuit which 

would later be named in honour of him and his 

older brother, Ricardo Rodríguez’s fabled story 

came to a premature end when he was killed in an 

accident during practice for the first-ever Mexican 

Grand Prix. 

They called him El Chamaco – The Kid. 

Ricardo was short and stocky, good-looking, a 

dapper dresser, with beautiful young wife, known as 

Sara or Sarita. He was an accomplished horseman, 

a swimmer, a water skier and a skater. He was also 

Mexico’s champion motorcycle racer by the age 

of 13, and a race car driver by 15. Besides all the 

above-mentioned attributes and a fine sense of 

balance and judgement, he possessed another 

massive asset: he was fearless. 

Today Ricardo is better known to many 

fans as the tragic younger brother of the famed 

Pedro Rodríguez who won two Grands Prix, one 

for Cooper-Maserati in 1967, one for BRM in 1970, 

and whose exploits in sportscars, particularly in 

the wet, made him an other-worldly god. 

But when Ricardo was alive he was the 

national hero and the rising star on the international 

racing scene. Pedro walked in his shadow. 

The brothers spearheaded Mexico’s 

thrusting global sporting emergence and were 

celebrities who rubbed shoulders with the likes of 

President Lopez-Mateos. 

In his first car race, in a 954 cc OSCA 

purchased for him by his wealthy father Don Pedro, 

to whom Lopez-Mateos’s government entrusted 

the lucrative task of collecting the income from a 

string of brothels, Ricardo finished third to a Jaguar 

D Type. Don Pedro was so impressed, he bought 

him a Porsche RS550, and soon his younger son 

was impressing in events against topline US drivers 

of the calibre of Ray Crawford. The Kid wasn’t just 

fast and fearless – he had an innate feel for what 

he was doing. 

Pedro was born in Mexico City on January 

18, 1940; Ricardo there on February 14, 1942. They 

lionised one another and were close friends as well 

as brothers. Pedro saw in Ricardo a genuine spark 

of unique talent; Ricardo watched and learned 

from his older sibling’s own impressive racing 

performances. 

25

After his performances in the OSCA and 

the Porsche, Ricardo was noticed by US Ferrari 

importer Luigi Chinetti who ran the North 

American Racing Team, NART. By 1960 he was 

racing a NART Ferrari in Europe, finishing second 

at Le Mans with Andre Pilette in a 250GT. He and 

Pedro also finished third at Sebring and second at 

the Nurburgring 1000 kms. 

The following season Ricardo was recruited 

by Enzo Ferrari for his works team, becoming the 

youngest driver in Formula One at 19. He would 

repay Il Commendatore’s faith by winning the 

Montlhery 1000 kms that year, and again in 1962 

when he also won the Targa Florio with established 

stars Olivier Gendebien and Willy Mairesse. 

It was his performance on his Grand Prix 

debut, at Monza in 1961, that really demonstrated 

his star quality, however. That season the famed 156 

‘Sharknose’ was the class of the field as the British 

struggled to catch up after refusing to believe that 

the 1.5-litre F1 really would replace the 2.5-litre 

formula in which they had come to power. Ferrari 

seniors Wolfgang von Trips and Phil Hill were vying 

for the title that year, backed by the talented Richie 

Ginther. But at Monza only Trips beat Ricardo to 

pole position. Hill was third fastest. 

The race ended tragically, with Trips dead 

after a second-lap collision with Jim Clark; Hill won 

and wrapped up an unhappy title, while Ricardo’s 

car broke like all the other Sharknoses. Ostensibly 

he succumbed to a broken fuel pump, but Hill 

remembered that only a change of engine the 

night before the race had prevented him being 

afflicted by a batch of faulty valve springs that 

affected his team-mates on the day. But Ricardo 

had done enough, and was signed for 1962 to race 

26

oth F1 and sportscars for the Scuderia. 

He started the year well with second place 

at Pau in a non-title race, before winning the Targa. 

But his great friend Jo Ramirez, who had travelled 

with him from Mexico at the start of his own 

stellar career as a mechanic and team organiser, 

remembers the tears in Ricardo’s eyes in Holland 

when he had his first Grand Prix of the season and 

realised that his once-great mount had been left 

behind as the British V8s hit their stride. 

He qualified 11th for the Dutch GP, two 

places behind Hill. But as Phil finished third, Ricardo 

crashed. 

In Monaco he was disappointed not to be 

allowed to race, and only to try Mairesses’s car in 

practice, but in Belgium where Ferrari’s V6 was 

left breathless against the Climax and BRM V8s, 

he was seventh fastest in practice, three places 

behind Hill, and finished fourth in his team leader’s 

wheeltracks as Jim Clark scored his first Grand Prix 

victory for Lotus. 

In Germany he outqualified Hill round the 

Nurburgring, 10th place to 12th, and finished sixth 

as the champion retired, while in Italy he qualified 

11th, four places ahead of the Californian, but 

finished 23 laps down in 14th place after a series 

of pit stops with an ignition fault. 

At Le Mans, however, he and Pedro wrote 

another dramatic chapter in their careers. They 

put in such a fantastic drive in Chinetti’s 2.4-litre 

246SP to keep the pressure on the winning works 

4-litre 330 TR1/LM driven by Hill and Gendebien, 

that there were accusations their engine could 

not possibly be so small. But their secret was to 

drive flat out, even in the dark, and they kept the 

veterans honest for 15 hours before the NART 

27

acer’s transmission wilted after 174 laps. 

Ferrari decided not to run in the inaugural 

Mexican Grand Prix in November, so Ricardo did a 

deal to race one of Rob Walker’s Lotus Climaxes in 

front of his adoring countrymen. 

In his autobiography penned by Michael 

Cooper-Evans’, Rob recalled: “When we were in 

Monza in September Ricardo asked me if he could 

drive my Lotus 24 in the Mexican GP as Ferrari was 

not going to enter. It was a non-championship 

race and the first Formula One race ever to be held 

in Mexico. I talked it over with Alf Francis and we 

agreed that we might as well go ahead although the 

starting money was not terribly good, and I would 

stay at home and leave it to Alf to run the team. 

“Ricardo had been motorcycle champion 

of Mexico when he was 13, he’d started racing cars 

when he was 15 and he’d become a works Ferrari 

Formula One driver by the time he was 19. He was 

regarded as being much more talented than his 

elder brother – although Pedro became a great 

driver later on, and a very good friend of mine – 

and I think that the locals really expected him to 

win in Mexico City, which was a lot of pressure for 

such a young man to handle.” 

Typically, Rob called Ricardo from England 

on the morning of November 1, a Thursday, to wish 

28

him good luck. 

When he had first seen the Lotus 24, Ricardo 

had been disappointed that it was not as sleek as 

the car which Jim Clark was to drive, a monocoque 

25, and he and Pedro realised to their dismay 

that it was an older model. Ricardo had been too 

self-contained to venture up and down the pit 

road in his previous races, and hadn’t noticed the 

differences until he got close up. 

According to Rob, however, “On the first 

day of practice Ricardo was thrilled with the Lotus 

24 and told Alf that it handled much better than 

his Ferrari. He was fastest in practice until, while 

he was in the pits a few minutes before the end 

of the first session, John Surtees went slightly 

quicker. Ricardo got back into the car and as the 

mechanics were settling him in he crossed himself 

and kissed his father’s hand and then he went out 

to beat Surtees’ time.” 

Surtees was driving Jack Brabham’s Lotus 

24, with the same Climax V8 that Ricardo had. 

Ricardo was in his civvies by then and hadn’t 

intended going out again as he was due at an 

official function shortly afterwards. Francis had 

made adjustments to the carburation to suit the 

circuit’s high altitude. Some say that it was Don 

Pedro’s request that he went out once more to test 

the changes, others that it was the mechanics’. Sara 

told the Rodriguez brothers’ biographer, Carlos 

Jalife-Villalón, that Ricardo said to her: “I’ll test it 

for a lap and I’ll be back; it won’t be long.” 

Just after five o’clock he lost control of 

the blue and white car, just where the banking in 

the famed 180-degree Peraltada corner was at its 

bumpiest. The Lotus had twitched then swerved 

to the left, hitting the barrier head-on, and as the 

29

nose got trapped beneath the metal Ricardo was 

thrown out. He was horribly injured as Francois 

Cevert would be nine years later after a similar sort 

of accident, suffering hemicorporectomy. Pedro 

rushed to the accident and heard his brother say 

that he was afraid to die, before he succumbed at 

the track side. 

“Ricardo was the first driver to be killed in 

one of my cars and even though I wasn’t actually 

there when it happened it was still pretty traumatic 

for me,” Rob continued. “Alf assured me that nothing 

had broken on the car and that the accident had 

been caused by pure driver error, and this was 

confirmed by the Mexican scrutineers who examined 

the wreckage very carefully afterwards and could 

find absolutely no evidence of mechanical failure. I 

think that Ricardo was just overcome by the intense 

emotion of the situation and he was trying far too 

hard in a car which was notoriously difficult to drive 

anywhere near the limit.” 

Observers suggest, however, that Ricardo’s 

final run was no do or die effort. That he was not 

driving the 24 like a hothead. And in his excellent 

book Jalife-Villalón contends that there were grounds 

for suspecting that some suspension components 

might have broken. We will never know. 

According to Rob there was an unpleasant 

postscript when Don Pedro Rodriguez was quoted 

in an article in Paris Match as saying that his younger 

son had died because of a mechanical fault on 

the Walker car. Rob had taken out substantial 

insurance policies on all his drivers, and for tax 

reasons they were set up to compensate him for 

the loss of a driver’s services. He could then pass 

on the money to the driver’s next of kin, tax free, at 

his discretion. Rob told Don Pedro that he wouldn’t 

pay the money unless he retracted his accusation. 

This Don Pedro did, but then according to Rob 

he treated Ricardo’s young widow so appallingly, 

ostracising her at a funeral attended by the likes 

of President Lopez-Mateos, that he decided to 

pay the insurance settlement to her instead. He 

described her as “a spectacularly beautiful girl who 

adorned our pit whenever we raced in Mexico in 

later years.” 

Ricardo’s death touched society at every 

level in his homeland and was to Mexico what 

Ayrton Senna’s would later be to Brazil. Jalife- 

Villalón described the scene at the family's home 

in Mexico City: "The queue outside was endless 

30

as people who hardly knew Ricardo beyond 

his sporting feats went to pay tribute: they left 

cards, flowers, or pieces of paper with a simple 

thought, but mostly, they cried. The news spread 

all over Mexico and all activity ceased. Since the 

accident had occurred on Mexico's Day of the 

Dead, children in the streets asking for sugar skulls 

instead received the news that Ricardo was dead. 

They were informed by weeping adults, and even 

though they didn't know him, they returned home 

with sadness in their hearts." 

Jo Ramirez was shattered. Having travelled 

to Europe with him, he regarded Ricardo as a 

brother and Sara as a sister, and heard the news 

piecemeal while working for Maserati in Italy. 

“It was as if my whole world had ended,” 

he admitted in his autobiography. “I was ill for two 

days, shivering and shaking, without the will to do 

anything. I never thought that I’d take the death 

of someone who wasn’t one of my own family so 

hard; but then Ricardo had come to be like one of 

my family. He was always such a good friend, there 

whenever I needed him, always happy, always 

ready for a joke. He won the affection of all his 

fellow drivers because, although he was quicker 

than most of them, he was of a very simple nature. 

“Ironically, his death took place in Mexico, 

preparing for the Grand Prix that he most wanted 

to win, in front of people who idolised him, on the 

track that he loved and where he’d spent most of 

his brilliant but short career. Destiny had been too 

cruel to him. He shouldn’t have died, he should 

have won the World Championship one day and 

brought it to Mexico, as was his dream. 

“Who knows how far our Mexican champion 

would have gone,” he ponders all these years later, 

“a young man who had everything in his favour – 

except the necessary protection to survive a 150 

kmh crash at the entrance to Peraltada corner on 1 

November 1962.” 

As that old adage has it, there are no 

two sadder words in the English language, 

than ‘what if…’ 

v 

The Brothers Rodriguez 

by Carlos Jalife-Villalón 

$149.95 

Available from David Bull Publishing 

www.bullpublishing.com 

ISBN: 978-1-893618-89-3 

31

the driver market by Joe Saward 

WHO GOES WHERE IN 2013? 

Since Lewis Hamilton's decision to join Mercedes, the F1 driver market has been on the move... 

A lot of people in F1 were stunned when Lewis 

Hamilton announced his decision to leave McLaren 

to join Mercedes AMG Petronas at the end of this 

year. Although no-one will admit it, the move 

seems to have caught McLaren by surprise as no-on 

in Woking considered that Hamilton would make 

such an eccentric decision. The impression given 

was that the team was in a bit iof a scramble when 

it took the decision to sign Sergio Perez. There has 

been lots of speculation about the team getting 

money from Mexico, notably from Telmex owner 

Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, but the 

decisions seems to be rather more speculative than 

that with McLaren's marketing men seeing Latin 

America as being a good hunting ground for future 

funding, rather than having any deals in the bag. 

This move opened the way for Nico 

Hulkenberg to move from Force India to Sauber, 

an interesting move given that both teams have 

been fairly equally balanced this year. This suggest 

that the German sees a stronger future with the 

Swiss team, rather than the Indian operation. 

Lotus F1 Team's decision to keep Kimi 

Raikkonen was a good sign for the Enstone team 

and there are rumours of some big new sponsors 

on the way to the team in the next few weeks. We 

have heard rumours of a big technology company, 

a multinational banking corporation and a drinks 

firm. It is expected that Romain Grosjean will be 

confirmed as the second driver if he does not have 

any more disastrous races this year. The other 

major announcement in recent days has been 

the expected news that Scuderia Toro Rosso will 

continue with its current driver line-up of Daniel 

Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne (below). 

"Both drivers have done a good job this 

season," said Franz Tost. "Daniel joined us with a 

few Grands Prix under his belt and so his feedback 

and experience was particularly useful while Jean- 

Eric got up to speed, often having to deal with 

tracks he had never seen before. Since the summer 

break, both drivers have scored more points 

and everyone in the team has been impressed 

with their maturity in terms of working with the 

engineers and their racecraft on track." 

32

Sauber says that it has yet to decide who 

will be partnering Hulkenberg. 

"We’ve been observing Nico for some 

time now and his performances have been very 

persuasive," said Sauber's Monisha Kaltenborn. 

"He clearly showed that he can seize the chance 

if it arises. But high spots like that are one thing; 

systematic teamwork is another – and on that 

score I have confidence in Nico too. I’m sure he will 

fit in very well with the Sauber F1 Team." 

The team says that it will announce the 

second driver later. Kamui Kobayashi is obviously 

very hopeful, but he is a paid driver and the 

team may prefer to choose someone with some 

backing. The team's third driver Esteban Gutierrez 

is reckoned to be the favourite as this would fit 

in nicely with the team's Mexican sponsorships. 

That decision may have to wait until Sauber sees 

whether it can land some big sponsors. There are 

rumours of a couple of big deals in the pipeline 

and that is likely to affect driver choice. 

The Force India team is rather difficult to 

predict at the moment because of uncertainty 

over money. Vijay Mallya (left) has been rather 

short of it of late and his business partner Roy 

Sahara has also been in major financial troubles as 

well. And there is only so much money that one 

can borrow... 

Logically, the drive should go to the team's 

third driver Jules Bianchi, but there have been 

hints that others could be in the picture, notably 

Adrian Sutil, who wants to get back into F1 and 

is rumoured to have some money from Lenovo. 

This has not been confirmed. It seems that Paul di 

Resta will be staying, but there has been no word 

of a continued technology deal with McLaren 

33

and there have even been whispers that the team 

might switch from Mercedes to Renault. That does 

not seem very likely at this late stage of the year. 

One possibility that should not be 

discounted is that Narain Karthikeyan (right) might 

join the Force India. There are lots of reasons why 

this might not happen, but F1 is keen to bolster its 

Indian credentials and one way to do that would 

be to run Narain. Mallya has avoided all Indian 

drivers to date, saying that there are none good 

enough, but the cynics suggests that he would 

not take a local because it would push him out 

of the spotlight. The other question is whether 

or not Karthikeyan's sponsor Tata is interested in 

being associated with Mallya, which has not been 

the case thus far. Narain is popular in India and 

Tata has helped him a lot and it is possible that 

the giant conglomerate might accept a deal with 

Force India if it helped Karthikeyan. 

This would certainly appeal to Bernie 

Ecclestone, who is keen to promote more Indian 

interest in the sport. This year's Indian GP crowd 

was rather disappointing, numbering only 65,000, 

compared to 100,000 in the first year. 

There are some who like to speculate that 

Tata could take Force India off Mallya's hands 

and use it as a promotional vehicle for the many 

different companies in the group. That is an 

interesting idea in theory, but there is not much to 

back up the stories. Tata is vast, with more than 30 

subsidiaries, with a combined market capitalisation 

of nearly $90 billion. This is also a time of change 

and, perhaps, new ideas. The company chairman 

Ratan Tata is standing down at the end of the year, 

at the age of 74. His designated successor is Cyrus 

Mistry, a construction magnate whose family own

a big share of the Tata empire. He is 44 and was 

trained as a civil engineer at Imperial College in 

London. 

The company's automotive business, 

known as Tata Motors, also has a new CEO in 

Karl Slym, formerly a GM executive in China, who 

worked in India earlier in his career. It should 

be remembered, of course, that Tata Motors is 

the parent company of Jaguar Land Rover, the 

booming British-based firm that is now building 

luxury Jaguars cars with much success. This firm 

is currently developingthe Jaguar C-X75 hybrid 

supercar in league with Williams F1. 

The driver line-up at Williams is still to be 

announced, but the team is expected to run the 

heavily-sponsored Pastor Maldonado and youngster 

Valtteri Bottas (above), from Finland. This is bad 

news for Bruno Senna, who has not done a bad 

job this year. The problem for Senna is Maldonado 

brings so much money to the team that it cannot 

really drop him, even if his results have been pretty 

poor, apart for one brilliant day in Spain where he 

won the race for Williams. There is an urgent need 

to sign the highly-rated Bottas before someone else 

35

makes him an offer of a race drive. 

This means that more than likely Senna 

will be on the market and while his sponsorships 

might be attractive to Force India, the team's 

future might not be as attractive as the Williams. 

The problem is that there are not many drives 

left and Senna cannot really afford to sit around 

in a reserve role. He could go to Caterham, which 

is looking for cash. There have been rumours 

that Charles Pic is a possible driver there as well, 

although he is probably talking to Force India as 

well. Pic's connections are more likely to be of use 

with a team that has a Renault engine. 

Vitaly Petrov, Giedo Van der Garde, Davide 

Valsecchi and Luis Razia are all rumoured to be 

kicking around with money as well. A logical move 

would be for Petrov to join forces with Marussia to 

create a solidly Russian, in preparation for the first 

Russian Grand Prix, which is due to take place in 

2014. Max Chilton is also being strongly tipped to 

be Marussia driver in 2013. 

HRT is said to be keen to generate money 

for Ma Qing Hua (above). The Chinese driver is seen 

as a good way to increase F1's popularity in China 

- another market that F1 is keen to expand into. It 

is logical for the sport to be looking seriously as 

increasing its support in the BRIC countries, as these 

are where the economies are developing fastest: 

Brazil, Russia, India and China. 

There is much talk of teams being for sale, 

as well, but as always in these matters, talk does 

not always lead to anything concrete. 

At the moment, money is key. v 

36

the hack looks back by Mike Doodson 

lewis like emerson... or is he? 

The task I set for the column this week was to 

analyse the circumstances that led Lewis Hamilton 

to leave the comfort of the McLaren team to which 

he owed everything. It was there that he had won 

his 20 GPs (to the time of writing) and looked set to 

win at least a couple more World Championships, 

assuming that the boffins at Woking managed to 

up their game over the next few years. Looking at 

things like that, however, I immediately realised 

that I had answered my own question, because 

Lewis has evidently concluded that there will be no 

up-gaming in the foreseeable future at McLaren. 

His career therefore required to be moved, which 

would have been fine if he hadn't chosen to tie 

his banner to a second-string gang like Mercedes- 

Benz. So let's analyse Lewis's choice of new home, 

bearing in mind of course that he and his minders 

are anxious to let it be known that he didn't do it 

for the money. 

One ingredient in the puzzle which I find 

interesting is the fact that it is only three years since 

Lewis's current team-mate Jenson Button moved 

in the opposite direction. Surely this is relevant. 

Yes, it has to be said that Jenson had previously 

made numerous embarrassingly misguided 

decisions in his career, but going from Brackley to 

Woking, as we all know now, was most certainly 

not one of them. So far, in the three seasons and 

more than 50 starts since he joined McLaren, he's 

won seven GPs. Surely Lewis can see that Jenson's 

old team, repainted silver and with seven-times 

World Champion Michael Schumacher as its 

principal driver, has won just once in more than 

100 attempts. 

At the time when Jenson quit Brawn/ 

Mercedes, late in 2009, you might have been 

forgiven for imagining that he had been poorly 

advised. Closer examination suggests the contrary, 

though. Driving a car which had started life as a 

Honda and then became a Brawn, Jenson had won 

six of the season's first seven races. Impressive 

though that statistic was, it offered strong 

evidence of the Brawn's 'unfair advantage,' namely 

its double-diffuser aerodynamics. It was essentially 

a gimmick, effective but not permanent. By midseason 

Red Bull and the others had started to get 

a handle on this particular techno-tweak, thereby 

putting an end to Button's headlong rush. The 

once unbeatable Brawn had been tamed and the 

lad from Somerset scraped home to the title by a 

mere 11 points, from Sebastian Vettel. 

It was a heady period in the career of Ross 

Brawn, who had never shown a serious interest in 

being a team owner in F1 but had the task thrust 

upon him in 2008 when Honda suddenly quit 

the sport. The Japanese manufacturer sold its 

eponymous outfit to its former employee for a few 

pennies in return for underwriting the several tens 

of millions which Team Brawn would need to keep 

more than four hundred people gainfully employed 

(or peacefully and legally dispensed with). It was at 

the very moment late in 2009 when Ross was about 

to unload the whole now much smaller caboodle 

on to Mercedes, for a very handsome contribution 

to his favourite charity (himself and his partners), 

that he learned of Button's departure. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought 

it rather cynical of Ross to have then called 

Switzerland and twisted the arm of his long-time 

chum Schumacher into venturing a return to 

F1 competition, at the age of 40 and after three 

years away, in order to save the deal. Recruiting 

Michael was certainly a big relief to Ross and his 

associates, for it camouflaged the ignominy of 

being abandoned by young Button. The Mercedes 

37

oard duly took the Schumacher bait, apparently 

unaware of the fact that the last 40+ year-old 

driver to have won a Grand Prix was three-times 

champion Jack Brabham way back in 1970. On 

the occasions when I have drawn this statistic to 

Ross's attention in public, he has tended to get 

a bit flushed and start blustering, almost as if he 

doesn't want those generous people in Stuttgart 

to discover that Fangio - who reached his peak in 

his forties - was the exception and that winning F1 

races is a young man's game. 

There is of course no earthly reason why a 

well-financed Mercedes-Benz F1 operation, with a 

proven engineer like Ross Brawn in charge, should 

not blossom at some future stage. It may indeed 

reverse the disappointments of the last three 

years, overwhelming the might of Red Bull and 

the two other Big Three members. With all that 

talent on board, perhaps even Adrian Newey is 

beatable, and Mercedes F1 could be en route to 

locking down championships on a regular basis. 

Perhaps. To do it, it’s also going to need head office 

to keep on patiently writing those huge cheques, 

and to keep its inspirational young driver Mr 

Hamilton motivated to deliver the race wins. But 

as Lewis himself has conceded, none of this is 

likely to happen in the next couple of years, which 

means he's inuring himself to a long period in the 

doldrums. By his own admission he's going to 

need a high level of intestinal fortitude, a quality 

which has not come easily to him so far in his 

career. Personally, I would not bet on the gamble 

paying off. 

Historically, the closest parallel to Lewis's 

step into the F1 unknown took place at the end 

of 1975, when Emerson Fittipaldi, with two world 

titles behind him, abandoned a well-established 

winning team (it was also McLaren) and switched 

to the Copersucar-financed outfit being run by his 

elder brother Wilson. It was madness. The proudly 

Brazilian team had been in operation for only one 

season, based on an industrial estate in London 

and at first staffed patriotically with all-Brazilian 

mechanics who couldn't cope with the English 

food and climate. The chief designer, Richard 

Divila, had been snatched away from his university 

engineering course by the brothers a few years 

earlier, and although his first attempt at F1 had 

been breathtakingly innovative (radiators behind 

the gearbox), it was also hopelessly impractical. 

He didn't last long in F1 but Divila's services 

have been greatly in demand in various categories 

of sportscar racing ever since then, with 32 races 

on his schedule so far this year alone. He will never 

forget the commotion which Emerson's move 

generated inside the Copersucar team, which 

was in the process of rebuilding itself as a more 

conventional outfit, running two cars instead of 

one, and was not ready for a two-times champion 

as its lead driver. "When Wilson came and told 

me to sit down, I guessed what was coming," he 

says. "'Oh bother,' I screamed at him (not the exact 

word), it's the wrong time and there's no way we'll 

be ready for him'. It just threw a spanner in the 

works." 

Divila believes that Fittipaldi's departure 

from McLaren, like Lewis Hamilton's 37 years 

later, had been motivated because he didn't feel 

sufficiently loved by his team and especially its 

sponsor. "Emerson was miffed because Marlboro 

wouldn't pay him what he wanted. Niki Lauda had 

just won his second championship with Ferrari 

and there was talk about Marlboro having made 

him the sport's first million-dollar driver. I believe 

that Copersucar paid him the same that Niki was 

supposed to be getting." 

In the event, it looked for a while as though 

Divila's second F1 design had some promise. "It 

was running bloody well in pre-season testing 

at Interlagos, and we were pretty optimistic until 

the week of the first race (also at Interlagos), 

when Emerson managed to crack his elbow in a 

charity tennis match. Even so, we were running 

third for a while, and finished fifth with a misfire. 

But what stuffed us that year was a change of tyre 

specification from Goodyear which came in at the 

38

confidence, which seems to be Lewis's hangup. 

No personal manager worth his salt would 

sanction tattoos for his client, if only because 

they're a big turn-off for sponsorship in parts of 

Asia. In Japan, for example, they're associated with 

the Yakuza, violent gangsters who live outside the 

law. I've read that Lewis was asked by McLaren to 

cover up the tatts when he first revealed them, but 

since deciding to quit the team he's been flaunting 

them. You can imagine what the attitude will be 

at strait-laced Stuttgart, unless of course they've 

decided to set sales targets for their limousines 

among a whole new sector of potential customers 

start of the European season. The development of 

the tyre had been done by Ferrari and McLaren, 

whose cars had most of the weight on the front. 

The rest of us were left to try to get the handling 

sorted by putting on four-inch bell housings and 

taking other drastic steps." 

Emerson's pride would not permit him 

to admit that his abilities were limited to driving 

rather than management. Having hung on in F1 

with his own team for another five years, until 

the bailiffs arrived, he was rewarded with just two 

podium finishes. He dropped out of international 

racing altogether for three years before making 

his come-back at the age of 38 in America, where 

he won the Indy '500' twice and made an enduring 

impact. 

It remains to be seen whether Lewis, like 

Emerson, will earn the devotion of his crew at 

Mercedes and the respect of the press who will be 

chronicling his career in a Silver Arrow. I can't speak 

about this from personal experience because I've 

only had a passing conversation with the lad on a 

couple of occasions, but it seems to me that he tends 

to wear his heart on his sleeve, or on his person. In 

past columns I've mentioned the diamond ear studs 

and the obsession with facial hair, and in the past 

few weeks he's been sporting extensive tattoos. 

While this fixation with personal appearance may 

be common among football players, it's unusual (if 

not unknown) among racing drivers. 

As a driver, Lewis has the bearing of 

greatness, which is why I find those tattoos 

particularly worrying. It's true that Kimi Räikkönen 

is also a tattoo fiend, but in his case they're more a 

mark of calculated waywardness, like the boozing, 

than an indication of a shortage of social selfwith 

body piercings and decorated torsos. 

Tattoos or no, I'm left to speculate on the 

future of a man in whose talents I retain complete 

faith. Perhaps he will evince the same stoicism that 

Schumacher was required to maintain in the five 

years that it took before Ferrari got its act together 

and provided him with the car that carried him to 

the first of his five-on-the-trot titles in 2000. On the 

other hand, Lewis and Mercedes may lose patience 

with one another long before that happens. 

In the meanwhile, we hacks can count on 

having plenty to write about in the next few years. 

Let's hope it doesn't end unpleasantly. v 

39

qualifying report by Joe Saward 

WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND 

Lewis Hamilton was in a class of hisown in qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and then Red Bull Racing blew Sebastian Vettel’s 

chances.... and the German was sent to the back of the grid. It was Spain all over again - with the roles redistributed...

"It’s the first time for a long time that I 

have been ahead of the Red Bulls," said an excited 

Hamilton. "We are strong enough to fight them, 

the team’s done a fantastic job all weekend. 

The car’s felt beautiful. I don’t know why the car 

works so well here. We’ve not really made any 

improvements to the car since the last race, so I 

guess it just suits. We’re always modifying small, 

little wings but it does very, very little – but the car’s 

felt great from the start. Actually I didn’t change 

anything going into qualifying from P3. That lap 

felt fantastic. Our car works incredibly well around 

here. Our aero package really suits this track; the 

set-up was perfect, and everything came together 

perfectly for qualifying. My lap felt really great. I 

enjoyed it so much. I love this track. Our race pace 

is very strong, but so is Red Bull's so staying ahead 

will be tough." 

Jenson Button was not far behind, but at the 

sharp end in F1 these days, every tenth counts and 

so he was pretty disappointed. He qualified sixth, 

but would start fifth after Vettel was penalised. 

"I shouldn't really be starting this far back," 

he said. "All weekend, I've been pretty happy with 

the car, but, for some reason, we just couldn't 

find the pace in qualifying. We don't know why. 

Obviously, our car is very quick around here. Lewis 

put it on pole by quite a margin, so there's some 

more time to find." 

Mark Webber qualified second, ahead of 

his team-mate, even before Vettel was sent to the 

back. 

"It was smooth qualifying session for both 

Seb and I and we did what we could," Mark said. "I 

think it went well." 

The Australian was hopeful that the Red 

41

Bull would get a better start than the McLaren, as 

has happened on a number of occasions this year. 

Vettel had a troubled time in the morning 

session, which he did only a few laps because of 

brakes problems. 

"This afternoon we were settling in quite 

well and the pace was there, but McLaren, in 

particular Lewis, are pretty quick. So they were 

out of reach today. I’m not entirely happy with my 

qualifying, the last part of qualifying was quite 

tricky for me. I think I should have been a little 

bit quicker, whether it would have been enough 

to beat Mark… All in all I think we can be quite 

happy. Race pace should be good tomorrow." 

The bad news came later. 

"During the slow down lap following the 

final run of Q3, Renault instructed to immediately 

stop Sebastian’s car on the circuit due to an issue 

with the fuel system," Christian Horner explained. 

The team tried to argue that it was force 

majeure but the FIA Stewards were having none 

42

of it. There was not enough fuel in the car and that 

was that. Vettel was excluded from qualifying and 

sent to the back of the field. The team said that he 

would start from the pitlane 

"Sebastian will have a busy evening ahead 

of him," said Horner. 

The final few minutes of the qualifying were 

a scramble with Hamilton clear and away but five 

drivers behind him covered by just three-tenths of 

a second. It was Pastor Maldonado who was the 

next man in the queue, although he reckoned that 

the qualifying session had not been easy. 

"It was a difficult session, especially in Q2 as 

we were on the limit in P10," he said, "but I saw the 

potential in the car. We then found a great balance 

in Q3 and I'm happy that we are back to looking 

strong again. I think we showed throughout the 

weekend that we are competitive and I did my best 

in qualifying. I'm really happy for the team. Points 

are very important for us so I will be pushing to the 

maximum." 

Alas, points are what Pastor has been 

missing out on all year... 

Bruno Senna did not have as enjoyable a 

time as his team-mate and ended 

up 14th on the grid. 

"This weekend we have had 

a few problems, so that is how it 

is," he said. "Hopefully tomorrow 

the car will be quick in the race as 

we have a competitive car." 

The team admitted to having 

had "a car problem" in Q2. It was 

fixed and Bruno was sent out for 

a second run but he could not get 

through into Q3. 

Next in the tight bunch at the 

front was the ever-present Kimi 

Raikkonen, still quietly collecting 

points at every race. 

"Qualifying was good," 

said the Finn. "The car hasn't 

felt fantastic all weekend but 

we decided we weren't going 

to change the car's set-up from 

where it was for the last race. It 

was the right choice because in 

the end the circuit came to us in 

qualifying. The car was the best 

it has been so far here. We'll give 

tomorrow our best shot; Let's see 

if we can make a good start to get 

43

FRIDAY - FREE PRACTICE 1 

1 L Hamilton McLaren 1:43.285 

2 J Button McLaren 1:43.618 

3 S Vettel Red Bull 1:44.050 

4 F Alonso Ferrari 1:44.366 

5 M Webber Red Bull 1:44.542 

6 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:44.694 

7 P Maldonado Williams 1:45.115 

8 N Rosberg Mercedes 1:45.194 

9 V Bottas Williams 1:45.347 

10 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:45.422 

11 F Massa Ferrari 1:45.567 

12 N Hulkenberg Force India 1:45.587 

13 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:45.722 

14 R Grosjean Lotus 1:45.743 

15 J Bianchi Force India 1:45.769 

16 S Perez Sauber 1:45.811 

17 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:46.649 

18 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:46.708 

19 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:47.418 

20 T Glock Marussia 1:47.891 

21 P de la Rosa HRT 1:48.354 

22 M Chilton Marussia 1:48.887 

23 Q Ma HRT 1:50.487 

24 G Van der Garde Caterham No time 

right behind the Red Bulls, and then we'll see what 

happens after that." 

Romain Grosjean continued to keep a low 

profile and ended up 10th on the timesheets and 

ninth on the grid. 

"It wasn't a great qualifying lap for me 

today, and P10 is not where we want to be on the 

grid," he said. "In the last run in Q3 I had no grip so 

wasn't able to find more pace. The car had felt fine 

before that and we looked good through the other 

qualifying sessions. It just means I have some more 

work to do in the race and I think there's more to 

44

come from me and the car." 

The team said that overall it was pretty 

happy with the performances. 

"We could have possibly managed even 

more with both drivers," said Alan Permane, the 

chief race engineer. "We should be well placed for 

tomorrow. Romain was looking set for a strong lap 

too, matching Kimi for the first two sectors, but 

he lost half a second on the final sector; we'll be 

looking at what went wrong there. As has been 

the trend this season, we're confident in terms 

of where our race pace should be relative to our 

opposition. We completed a promising long run 

on Friday afternoon; we have no problems or 

issues with tyre wear, warm-up, or anything like 

that so there are no reasons why we should not 

have a good evening tomorrow." 

The two Ferrari drivers qualified seventh 

and ninth, but would move up to sixth and eighth 

when Vettel was penalised. This was not very good 

given that Fernando Alonso is trying to keep his 

World Championship hopes alive and does not 

seem to have the car to do it. However, Vettel's 

penalty was a godsend for the Italian team 

"In all three free practice sessions, we were 

always around this position, so it would have been 

too optimistic to hope for more in Q3," Alonso said. 

45

"I did almost the same time on three occasions 

in Q2 and Q3, which means there was nothing 

more to come. I am pleased with the work we 

have done today, because we squeezed every last 

drop of performance out of the car. The updates 

we brought here have improved our performance 

but the others have not been relaxing on the sofa 

watching television. Usually, Saturday is the day 

we suffer the most, and on Sunday things always 

go better: let's hope that will also be the case this 

time. With so little tyre degradation, the strategic 

choices are much more limited and so too are the 

opportunities to make up places. We know that in 

the three remaining races, we must score fourteen 

points more than Vettel and that is our one and 

only objective." 

Massa said that it was "a rather difficult and 

complicated weekend. 

46

"We were hoping to be able to start a bit 

further up, at least on the front three rows of the 

grid," he said. "In Q3, I opted to run a different 

programme to my team-mate, partly because I only 

had one set of new Option tyres available. Looking 

back, one could say that was not the best choice, 

but it's always easy to be wise with hindsight. I did 

not have all the updates we brought here: that was 

definitely not great, but looking at Fernando's result, 

it didn't make a difference. On the last lap I had a 

bit of oversteer in one corner which cost me a few 

hundredths: maybe I could have been eighth but it 

would not have changed much. Honestly, today it 

would have been hard to do more than this." 

Team boss Stefano Domenicali admitted 

that the team was "very disappointed with this 

result". 

"We were unable to give our drivers a car 

with which they could compete for the front rows 

of the grid, despite all our best efforts here at the 

track and back at the factory in Maranello," he said. 

"It's crazy to see how things have changed in just a 

week, with the pecking order varying from track to 

track by half a second. But there's no point crying 

over spilt milk: we will just roll up our sleeves and 

concentrate on preparing for tomorrow's race." 

Behind Alonso was Nico Rosberg in the 

faster of the two Mercedes. He ended up seventh 

on the grid after Vettel's penalty, while Michael 

Schumacher was back in 13th. 

"Qualifying worked out well for us today 

as P8 was our target," said Nico. "We were able to 

achieve that position. I'm ahead of a Ferrari and 

a Lotus so that's a good step, and we have made 

some improvements with our set-up work this 

weekend. Thanks to my mechanics today who 

47

FRIDAY - FREE PRACTICE 2 











11 B Senna Williams 1:43.191 




15 P Di Resta Force India 1:43.578 




18 V Petrov Caterham 1:45.245 



22 C Pic Marussia 1:46.671 


24 N Karthikeyan HRT 1:47.406 

did a great job to fix an issue with the brakes just 

before qualifying and make sure that the car was 

ready in time. " 

Schumacher admitted that the Q sessions 

had not gone as he had planned. 

"We changed our approach a little for the 

last run in Q2," he said. "Then I did not properly 

make use of it in the first sector and particular in 

turn one. So we are not quite where we would 

want to have qualified." 

The team admitted that the car is still not 

good enough. 

"A good qualifying session for Nico today, 

48

considering the car that we have at the moment," 

said Ross Brawn. "He drove very well, and the team 

did a good job to get him out at the right time and 

maximise our potential. We squeezed as much 

performance out of the car as possible today. It was 

a little frustrating for Michael as a small mistake on 

his quick lap in Q2 prevented him from finishing 

higher up the field." 

Force India did not make it into the top 10 

in qualifying, but after Vettel was bounced Nico 

Hulkenberg snuck into 10th place. Paul di Resta 

ended up 12th. 

SATURDAY - FREE PRACTICE 3 

























49

"I expected a bit more from today," said 

Hulkenberg. "But it seemed that our car was no so 

competitive in the cooler temperatures because I 

felt much happier during final practice in the sunny 

conditions. So maybe the lower temperatures 

caught us out. I have a free choice of tyres so 

hopefully we can use that to our advantage." 

Di Resta said that he had been struggling 

with the balance of his car. 

"It was always likely to be quite a tough 

qualifying session," he said. "Our long run pace 

hasn't looked too bad but I'm just struggling to get 

the ultimate performance from the car. We're still 

in a reasonable position to try and score points." 

Sergio Perez ended up 11th on the grid in 

the faster of the two Saubers. 

"My last lap was a good one and I think this 

is just about the maximum possible for us here. Q3 

today wasn't within reach, although yesterday I 

hoped it would be." 

Kamui Kobayashi was back in 15th, half a 

50

second off the pace of the Mexican. 

"I have been struggling with the balance 

of the car since we got here," he said. "We did a 

lot of changes and managed to improve it to a 

certain extent, but I still had problems with the 

front brakes locking. This was also the reason for 

the mistake on my final flying lap in Q2. I hit the 

brakes, the front wheels locked and that was it. I 

think in race conditions we should be better, but 

it won't be easy to improve. The circuit allows for 

overtaking, but you need to have the speed for it." 

Daniel Ricciardo was 16th on the grid in his 

Toro Rosso, with Jean-Eric Vergne alongside him, 

as has been the vogue for much of the year. 

"It's been a harder weekend for us than we 

had expected," the Australian said. "We definitely 

made progress today, compared to where we 

were on Friday, which is positive, but in the end 

it was not enough to move us higher up the grid. 

Everything went smoothly on my side of the 

garage, apart from losing a lap on the Prime, when 

51

my headrest was moving and I had to come in to 

have it fixed. I think this motivated me to then do 

two really good laps and the pace on the Option 

was okay, showing we had made progress again, 

not just from yesterday, but also from this morning. 

However, we are not where we want to be." 

Vergne was frustrated not to get through 

into the Q2 session. His fast lap was looking good 

until he spun at Turn 20. 

"We have been struggling all weekend 

with understeer and we are still trying to do our 

maximum and I was pushing a lot," he said. "We 

really only had one lap to see where the balance 

was this afternoon and the car seemed to be 

going the other way towards oversteer and I made 

a mistake. That doesn't mean I will have to fight 

the car all the time tomorrow, because there are 

still things we can do like playing with the front 

flap and tyre pressures to improve the situation." 

The Caterhams were 18th and 20th, split 

by Charles Pic's Marussia, which was pretty much 

average. 

Kovalainen said that he was pleased with 

his final run. 

52

"There was more pace in the car," he said. 

"My first run on the medium tyres was ok but on 

the second run on the softs I had a problem with 

the DRS that meant I wasn't able to really attack 

the high speed corners and that cost me a bit 

of time. Despite that I think we're looking ok for 

tomorrow. The balance feels better with the lower 

track temperatures we had for quali and that'll 

most likely be the same tomorrow for the race." 

Petrov was disappointed. 

"I thought the car would be a bit quicker 

than it was," he said. "We had a slightly tricky FP3 

and tried a couple of set-up options to find a good 

balance and when I went out for my first run in Q1 

it didn't really feel like I could push. It felt better on 

the softs and on my fastest lap I was looking good 

up to turn 17 but a bit of traffic after that held me 

up just enough to cost me time. The good thing 

is that the car definitely felt better when the track 

temperatures had dropped a bit." 

Pic was very happy to be 19th, not only 

beating his team-mate, but also getting ahead of 

Petrov. 

"I am really very happy with my qualifying 

session today. I had a very good car; the balance 

was almost perfect. I lost a little bit of time in the 

second sector of my quick lap and that is how 

53

Kovalainen was able to get ahead. I have to be 

happy with the lap though as it represents my best 

qualifying result of the season, so a great result for 

me and the team. The objective is again to stay in 

touch with the Caterhams." 

Timo Glock was 21st. 

"Not a bad day overall but a disappointing 

end when it counted unfortunately," he said. "This 

morning, at the start of FP3, we struggled a little, 

but at the end we arrived at a good set-up. We 

carried this through to qualifying and seemed to 

have good momentum all the way through until 

the last, most important, lap when his car had no 

grip. Until then we were fighting hard with the 

Caterhams, so it's a little disappointing. " 

The HRT team had Pedro de la Rosa in 22nd 

and Narain Karthikeyan 23rd. 

"We completed a good practice and 

qualifying session. I was comfortable in the car and 

I'm sure that I could have improved by a couple 

of tenths but surely the rest could have too," said 

Pedro. "The car was running well and we had no 

problems with the temperature of the brakes or 

the engine at a circuit like this one which is so 

hot, so I'm happy. I think we've got good pace for 

tomorrow's race. 

Narain was making his first visit to Abu 

Dhabi and so was at something of a disadvantage 

to his team-mate. 

"It is very technical circuit," he said. "I'm 

finding it tougher than expected. I didn't manage 

to string together a good lap; I was running well 

on the first set of tyres but with the second set I 

found traffic and the rear tyres wore out before I 

could improve my time. Although I'm not entirely 

comfortable at this circuit." 

v 

54

QUALIFYING 1 QUALIFYING 2 










































QUALIFYING 3 











Grid positions appear in red 

* Vettel was disqualfied from the qualifying session for failing to enough fuel in the car. 

55

ace report by David Tremayne 

UPSTAIRS AT ERIC’S 

A gripping race throws up the result we’ve 

been waiting for since Bahrain… 

56

Don’t you just love Kimi Raikkonen? In the age of 

the politically correct race driver, with the ready 

smile and the perfect quip for sponsors, the plainspeaking 

Finn brushed aside David Coulthard’s 

podium questions about his emotional state after 

holding off Fernando Alonso in a spectacular Abu 

Dhabi Grand Prix to score a brilliant win in his 

comeback season. 

“I don’t feel a lot,” he said, in that inimitable 

staccato speech pattern. “The last time everyone 

gave me shit because I didn’t smile enough. But 

I’m very happy for the team and myself, but mainly 

for the team.” 

When his engineers had attempted to 

inform him of progress over the radio during the 

race, he had come over all Garbo and retorted: 

“Just leave me alone!” Later, when they told him to 

keep working all the tyres under the second safety 

car, he snapped: “yes, yes, yes! I’m doing that all 

the time!” 

When it was all over, he added trenchantly: 

57

“It’s not as if I’m stupid. I can remember what to 

do.” Conventional, he isn’t, the Kimster. But he gets 

the job done. 

The key to Lotus’s long overdue 2012 victory 

came when Kimi beat Mark Webber and Pastor 

Maldonado away from the startline, and slotted in 

behind runaway early leader Lewis Hamilton. 

Lewis was 1.4s ahead after the opening lap, 

which saw Nico Hulkenberg collided in the first 

corner with Bruno Senna, after contact with Force 

India team-mate Paul di Resta who got pushed 

into him. 

“I’m not sure what happened going into 

Turn One because I had a great launch and moved 

ahead of Nico, but on the exit of the corner I 

realised immediately that I had a puncture,” Paul 

said. 

“I made quite a bad start and had a poor 

run going into the first corner,” Nico said. “Then I 

just got sandwiched by the cars around me go. 

I think there was my team-mate, a Sauber and a 

Williams around me, and there was not enough 

space. I tried to back out of it, but it was too late. 

There was contact between the cars and that was 

my race over.” 

“I had a good start getting myself into a 

good position for Turn One but then a few cars 

tangled ahead and hit me,” Bruno said. “I had to 

start from zero again but I kept my cool.” 

There was also some contact between 

58

Romain Grosjean and Sebastian Vettel, who had 

started on medium tyres in the pit lane after his 

controversial fuelling problem in qualifying. The , 

team elected to start him there because it meant 

they could change gear ratios, among other things, 

in an attempt to overcome poor straightline speed 

from practice and quallie. That damaged Seb’s 

front wing, hampering his progress. Both di Resta 

and Grosjean made pit stops with punctures, while 

Rosberg came in for a new nose. 

On the second lap Lewis made a mistake, 

locking his brakes and running wide. “It was the 

only mistake I made all weekend, when my brakes 

weren’t fully up to temperature and I locked up 

into Turn Eight,” he explained. “After that, however, 

everything was going really well.” 

The first interruption to the flow of the race 

came on lap nine, when Nico Rosberg, whose front 

wing had been damaged in a brush with Grosjean, 

slammed into and over Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT 

between Turn 16 and 17. The Mercedes landed 

on its wheels before hitting the wall, but neither 

driver was harmed. 

“I had a problem with the hydraulic 

pressure and the steering of the car went rock 

solid, so I had to lift my foot off,” Narain explained. 

“Unfortunately, Rosberg was coming from behind 

59

and couldn’t avoid me.” 

“My car felt competitive today so it's a real 

shame not to have scored some points,” Nico said. 

“Unfortunately that chance was gone after the 

first lap incident with Romain. Then there was 

the accident which put me out of the race. Narain 

told me that his steering broke and he needed to 

brake, which I didn't expect in that high-speed 

corner. There was no time for me to react, and 

I'm very thankful that we are both fine. I went to 

the medical centre for a precautionary check but 

everything is good.” 

There was more drama under the safety 

car when it came out between laps nine and 14. 

Seb was following Daniel Ricciardo closely when 

his stablemate unaccountably brakes really hard. 

“Why does he keep stopping all the time?” Seb 

yelled to his engineers. In pulling hard right to 

60

avoid the Toro Rosso, he walloped a DRS signal 

board, further damaging his wing. So on lap 13 he 

dived into the pits, took on a new nose and a set 

of used soft-compound tyres, and resumed at the 

back. 

“That was a big mistake with Daniel 

stopping his car on the straight and I was very 

surprised,” Seb said later. “After that I said to myself 

either we go full attack or nothing…” 

The next big development came when 

Lewis suddenly slowed to a stop in Turn 14 on the 

20th lap. 

“I’m gutted,” he said. “I feel certain we could 

have won today. Everything was going really well 

and the car was a dream to drive. I was cruising 

and still pulling away when I had a fuel pressure 

problem. It was very sudden, and the car just died 

on me.” 

61

Now it seemed that Kimi had it made and that 

victory - his 19th - was a done deal. But this was the 

most spectacular race in Abu Dhabi’s brief history 

and nothing could be taken for granted. 

Fernando’s pressure on Pastor resulted in 

the Spaniard passing the Venezuelan on the 21st 

lap. 

“We missed the opportunity to finish on 

the podium today after we lost the use of KERS 

following the first safety car period,” the Williams 

driver recounted. “For sure there was more in the 

car. The pace was good and at the beginning I was 

closing the gap to Kimi, but we still collected some 

good points today and it was a great race.” 

At that stage the Ferrari lacked the pace to 

challenge the Lotus, and Ferdy was busy responding 

to attacks from Mark and Jenson Button. But then 

it began to go wrong for Mark on the 23rd lap 

when he was involved in an incident when trying 

to pass Maldonado which saw the Red Bull half 

spin and lose places to Jenson, Felipe Massa and

Sergio Perez. Three laps later the Australian had an 

incident with Felipe, which saw the Brazilian spin. 

“Nothing really worked out for us today,” 

Mark said glumly. “I think we were strong, but we 

never got free air and it’s difficult here with traffic; 

we saw quite a few incidents where people were 

trying to pass.” 

Felipe said he had worse degradation than 

he’d expected on the soft Pirellis, giving undesteer 

in the fast stuff and oversteer elsewhere. 

“The duel with Webber was the vital 

moment, as it meant I lost a lot of places at the 

crucial moment. He tried to go round the outside 

of me and we touched. Then he cut the chicane 

and came back across the track, forcing me to spin 

63

FASTEST RACE LAPS 
























to avoid hitting him…” 

By the time the pit stops had been made, 

between the 27th and 31st laps, Kimi faced a new 

threat and was only 1.4s clear of Seb, who was 

blending superb, relentless driving with excellent 

strategy. After the early problems and a big fight 

with Grosjean in which he was obliged to give a 

place back after putting all four wheels off the track 

to squeeze by the Lotus, he worked his way back 

up as others made their stops. Now the question 

was whether his tyres could go the whole distance 

as Fernando and Jenson battled for third in his 

wake. 

64

The answer was negative, but a beautifully 

timed second stop on the 37th lap saw him take a 

set of fresh tyres and drop only to fourth, crucially 

keeping ahead of a frenetic battle between 

Romain, Paul, Sergio and Mark, all of whom were 

into their own recovery drives. 

At that stage Seb was almost 30s adrift of 

Kimi, but after Paul had passed Romain, Sergio 

attempted to around both of them in Turn 13 on 

the 38th lap. As he hit the Lotus and spun his Sauber 

he triggered a second safety car intervention, 

because Romain also spun and collected Mark, 

who had nowhere to go. 

“Ultimately, in the incident that ended my 

race, I tried to go down the inside when the cars 

ahead made contact,” Mark said. “I thought there 

was an opportunity, but then Grosjean made 

contact with my car and that was the end for us. 

65

Whatever we tried today, it just wasn’t working 

out.” 

“It was a tight battle,” Romain said. “Sergio 

went off the track in Turn 13 and then came back 

on the inside in 14, leaving me no room. Mark then 

came behind me and we touched. It was a big 

shame. A great day for the team, but an unlucky 

one for me.” 

“We were looking really good in the race, 

and I had the feeling even a podium would have 

been possible,” Sergio said. “But then after my pit 

stop I got stuck behind Grosjean and di Resta, 

and could not get by them because I didn’t have 

enough straightline speed. I had to risk a lot to get 

by, but then unfortunately collided with the Lotus 

66

and my race was over. It is a real shame because 

our race pace was very good.“ 

Actually, Checo’s race wasn’t over; he got 

a 10s stop and go penalty, and by the finish was 

two-tenths shy of Timo Glock’s 14th place. 

So once again we had a safety cars, and 

this time it stayed out from lap 38 to lap 42. This 

is where Seb benefited massively. He’s been 29.8s 

adrift of Kimi on the 39th lap, but by the 40th the 

gap was only 3.3s… It’s called champion’s luck. 

Ferdy and Jenson were still between him and Kimi, 

however, so now he had to ride that luck for all he 

was worth. 

At the same time Ferdy launched a 

concerted challenge for victory with a flurry of 

fastest laps which reduced the gap to Kimi from 

3.2s on the 46th lap to 0.8s by the finish. Meanwhile, 

Seb finally squeezed ahead of Jenson with three 

67

laps to go, and quickly began to eat into the two 

leaders’ advantage, but he was still 3.3s behind 

when the flag finally fell. 

“I’m very happy,” Fernando said after taking 

three crucial points back from Seb. “We were not 

super-competitive this weekend, but I had some 

good overtakings, and good strategy let us fight 

until the end for victory. Second place, after starting 

sixth, was the maximum we could have done.” 

“I thought I could do this,” Seb said of his 

podium finish, “but in the first couple of laps it was 

messy and the target was drifting away. After the 

problems with the front wing, it was full attack or 

nothing. It was a fantastic race, helped a little by 

the second safety car, and I had a really nice fight 

68

with Jenson. He was very difficult to pass, but very 

fair, and I just squeezed my way past into Turn 11. 

For me it was a thrilling grand prix, up and down 

all the time.” 

“For me, it was quite a fun race,” Jenson 

said. “I had a few good battles out there, with Mark, 

Sebastian and Pastor and they were particularly 

good fun. But, unfortunately, I didn’t have the pace 

in the car to take the fight to the leaders today.” 

Maldonado hung on for a solid fifth, while 

Kobayashi was also fighting a KERS problem on his 

Sauber en route to a valuable sixth. 

“It was a very tough race and I am really 

happy I was able to get those eight points for 

the team,” he said. “To fight for fifth place in the 

69

Constructors’ Championship in the remaining two 

races will be very exciting. Unfortunately today I 

could not use the full performance of the car. There 

was a problem with downshifting, which meant I 

could not recharge the KERS properly and didn’t 

have full boost.” 

Massa took a disgruntled seventh, hounded 

home by Senna and di Resta who both made the 

most of what their races threw at them. Ricciardo 

took the final point for Toro Rosso after overhauling 

team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne. The Frenchman was 

also overtaken by Michael Schumacher, whose 

chance of points had been ended late in the race 

by a right rear puncture. 

Heikki Kovalainen had a strong run for 

Caterham to 13th ahead of Marussia’s Timo Glock, 

who just fended off Perez, and Vitaly Petrov took 

16th ahead of HRT survivor Pedro de le Rosa. 

The result leaves Seb 10 points ahead of 

Ferdy, 255 to 245, with Kimi retaining third with 

198. In the constructors’ stakes, Red Bull has 422 

points from Ferrari on 340, McLaren on 318 and 

Lotus on 288. 

Is a third title looming? Seb was asked, 

and his answer was so predictable. “There are 

still two races to go and we’ve seen how quickly 

things changed. If we had started third it would 

have been a different race, but we got the chance 

to fuck it up. But we got the maximum we could 

today, the car is still bloody quick, so I’m looking 

forward to the next two races.” 

So are we… 

But right now we’re also celebrating a great 

day for Eric Boullier and his merry men. It’s hard 

to think of a more popular victory since Williams’ 

triumph in Barcelona. 

v 

70

abu dhabi GRAND PRIX, YAS ISLAND, 4 NOVEMBER 2012 

1 K Raikkonen Lotus 1:45.58.667 - 172.878 kmh 

2 F Alonso Ferrari 1:45.59.519 - 0.852 

3 S Vettel red Bull 1:46.02.830 - 4.163 

4 J Button McLaren 1:46.06.454 - 7.787 

5 P Maldonado Williams 1:46.11.674 - 13.007 

6 K Kobayashi Sauber 1:46.18.743 - 20.076 

7 F Massa Ferrari 1:46.21.563 - 22.896 

8 B Senna Williams 1:46.22.209 - 23.542 

9 P Di Resta Force India 1:46.22.827 - 24.160 

10 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:46.26.130 - 27.463 

11 M Schumacher Mercedes 1:46.26.742 - 28.075 

12 J Vergne Toro Rosso 1:46.33.573 - 34.906 

13 H Kovalainen Caterham 1:46.46.431 - 47.764 

14 T Glock Marussia 1:46.55.140 - 56.473 

15 S Perez Sauber 1:46.55.435 - 56.768 

16 V Petrov Caterham 1:47.03.262 - 64.595 

17 P de la Rosa HRT 1:47.10.445 - 71.778 

R C Pic Marussia Engine - 41 laps 

R R Grosjean Lotus Accident - 37 laps 

R M Webber red Bull Accident - 37 laps 

R L Hamilton McLaren Engine - 19 laps 

R N Karthikeyan HRT Accident - 7 laps 

R N Rosberg Mercedes Accident - 7 laps 

R N Hulkenberg Force India Accident - 0 laps 

RACE DISTANCE: 55 laps - 305.355 km 

Drivers 

1 S Vettel red Bull 255 

2 F Alonso Ferrari 245 

3 K Raikkonen Lotus 198 

4 M Webber red Bull 167 

5 L Hamilton McLaren 165 

6 J Button McLaren 153 

7 F Massa Ferrari 95 

8 N Rosberg Mercedes 93 

9 R Grosjean Lotus 90 

10 S Perez Sauber 66 

11 K Kobayashi Sauber 58 

12 N Hulkenberg Force India 49 

13 P Di Resta Force India 46 

14 P Maldonado Williams 43 

15 M Schumacher Mercedes 43 

16 B Senna Williams 30 

17 J Vergne Toro Rosso 12 

18 D Ricciardo Toro Rosso 10 

Constructors 

1 Red Bull Racing 422 

2 Scuderia Ferrari 340 

3 Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 318 

4 Lotus F1 Team 288 

5 MercedesAMG Petronas 136 

6 Sauber F1 Team 124 

7 Sahara Force India F1 95 

8 Williams F1 Team 73 

9 Scuderia Toro Rosso 22 

72

OUR INFINITI INSPIRED PERFORMANCE GOES TO: KIMI RAIKKONEN

the last lap by David Tremayne 

TESTING TIMES 

This week sees one of the most important sessions 

of the season, with the Young Driver Test in Abu 

Dhabi. 

Any sport needs to renew itself, and at a 

time when many of the topliners who are fortunate 

to earn serious money from F1 hang around a lot 

longer than they used to, it’s essential that there 

is some platform from which the new bloods can 

demonstrate their talent. 

The line-ups read - Caterham: Giedo van 

der Garde and Alex Rossi; Lotus: Nicolas Prost, 

Edoardo Mortara and Davide Valsecchi; McLaren: 

Gary Paffett, Oliver Turvey and Kevin Magnusson; 

Red Bull: Antonio Felix da Costa and Robin Frijns; 

Sauber: Esteban Gutierrez and Robin Frijns; Toro 

Rosso: Luiz Razia and Johnny Cecotto Jnr. 

Back in the old days, when teams could 

enter three cars at times without the threat of 

world domination upsetting everyone else - could 

F1 really afford to have three Red Bulls or three 

McLarens on the grid these days even one were 

to be limited to a rookie driver and not eligibile for 

constructors’ points? – we were able to find out 

about talents such as the ill-starred Ignazio Giunti 

or Niki Lauda by watching them race their more 

experienced counterparts and comparing their 

lap times. Now that excitement belongs to the 

distant days of aluminium monocoques and flimsy 

rollover hoops. So we need a mechanism by which 

these young guys can show what they can do in an 

F1, and the Young Driver tests are the perfect way 

of doing that. I’m really looking forward to seeing 

what the likes of Felix da Costa and Frijns do, as 

the two that I’ve been most closely following this 

year. It’s a shame that James Calado hasn’t been 

included too somewhere. 

The problem thereafter, however, is how 

these guys find their way into race seats. Only the 

top five teams will be able to afford to run salaried 

drivers next year, plus Toro Rosso and, maybe, Force 

India. Everyone else will be obliged by economic 

necessity to run at least one pay driver. And the 

current minimum ante for that next year starts at 

$10m… 

Teams have to make a choice between 

many factors these days when choosing drivers. 

There isn’t a lot of difference in terms of speed, 

which on the face of it should be all that matters, 

but these are harsh economic times, made harsher 

still by the FIA’s newly introduced entry fee price 

hike, as they are are now calculated on a sliding 

scale based on a standard rate of $500,000 plus 

a charge per point scored in the previous year. 

Thus Red Bull will pay $4.4m, McLaren $2.98m and 

Ferrari $2.37m, calculated on their 2011 scores. 

The rabbits, such as Caterham, HRT and 

Marussia who didn’t score points, will be on the 

$500,000 basic rate. Because the new rate does 

away with service charges they will actually pay a 

little less than they did in 2011. But like everyone 

else, they have to compete in the development 

race if they are not to be left behind, and research 

and development costs money. 

There are other factors, of course, such as the 

desirability for a level of experience and the ability 

to help a team in the car development programme. 

That’s good news for the Kovalainens and Glocks if 

they can continue to pull down salaries around $2m, 

but with experienced and sponsored pay drivers 

such as the Sennas, Sutils and Petrovs, continued 

income is far from guaranteed for them. 

It’s a tricky situation. One might argue 

it has ever been thus, but there are more 

pay drivers now than ever seemed to be the 

case previously. 

v 

74

parting shot

The next GP+ will be 

published from AUSTIN 

on NOVEMBER 18 

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PASSION 

76

IN THE LAND OF BLACK GOLD - Grandprixplus

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